Games Workshop Warhammer Bretonnian Grail Knight Battle Standard Metal OOP GW The Texas Supreme Court today declined to hear a constitutional challenge brought by three craft breweries to a 2013 state law that stripped beer companies of the ability to sell their distribution rights to wholesalers.

John Manfreda, the administrator of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), died Saturday, May 25, from a heart attack. He was 73. Manfreda had led the alcohol and tobacco industries’ regulatory agency since January 4, 2005.

Following a federal judge’s ruling Friday evening, Anheuser-Busch InBev will be required to pull some Bud Light advertisements that suggest MillerCoors’ flagship light lagers, Miller Lite and Coors Light, contain corn syrup. Western District of Wisconsin Judge William Conley granted MillerCoors a “narrow in scope” preliminary injunction, blocking A-B from displaying billboards that say Bud Light contains “100% less corn syrup” than its rival’s lagers, as well as broadcasting a pair of television ads that he deemed “misleading.” The judge also denied A-B’s motion to dismiss the case.

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) this month announced the acceptance of a $420,000 offer in compromise from Constellation Brands’ Crown Imports LLC subsidiary. According to the TTB, between January 1, 2016, and April 25, 2019, Constellation used a third party to make illegal payments to retailers in an effort to secure draft beer placements.

In this week’s edition of Last Call: There Colorado breweries are set to close; Sierra Nevada asks breweries to honor their Camp Fire pledges; U.S. beer shipments decline in April; Boston Beer delays its downtown Boston taproom opening; and more news.

Texas craft brewers’ efforts to legalize beer-to-go sales is closer to passage than ever before. On Wednesday, Texas Senators unanimously passed sweeping legislation to maintain operations of the state’s alcohol regulatory body, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC), along with several changes to the state’s alcoholic beverage code, including an amendment that would permit a majority of the state’s manufacturing breweries to sell their offerings for off-premise consumption.

Despite months of rumors to the contrary, Stone Distributing Company (SDC) is not for sale. In a memo to employees last week, Stone Brewing CEO Dominic Engels sought to quash talk that the San Diego craft brewing company was attempting to offload its distribution business.

After 12 years of debating North Carolina’s self-distribution and franchise laws, brewers and wholesalers are one step away from their compromise being written into law. On Monday, the North Carolina Senate voted 38-3 to approve the Craft Beer Distribution and Modernization Act (House Bill 363), which the House approved in mid-April. The legislation now advances to Gov. Roy Cooper.

The U.S. beer industry was responsible for creating more than 2.19 million jobs that paid more than $101 billion in wages and benefits in 2018, according to a joint study released today by industry trade organizations the Beer Institute (BI) and the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA).